Follow Me Tour: The last of Botswana

Hippo not happy with us being so close

With almost 4000 photographs under my belt for this trip, it will take several weeks, if not months, to work through them all.
It was an amazing experience to take these photographs from a boat on the Chobe river, or a Unimog driving overland in the Chobe Nature Reserve on the northern most area of Botswana.

I have added more of the photographs to Pinterest if you want to have a look. As I work through to 4000, more will be added to my Botswana board. My perfect picture turned out to be not so perfect after all.
The composition is very good, but the photograph is not perfectly sharp so there is not much that I can do with it in terms of printing and framing it for an exhibition we will be having later this year. But such is life :)
I am thinking of painting it in oil, then at least the effort will not have been wasted.
Then again, my husband thinks it can be fixed since the photograph is good enough. I am so happy now!
He just made my day, and via Skype too!
Oh, if you want to see what the hubbub was about - here is the link :)

Water monitor basking in the early morning sun

Infographic Thursday: The Creative Process...a comic

A little humour for the day before Friday! :)

Issuu Sept/Oct Edition

In this issue, cover author New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Dianne Duvall shares with us about her Immortal Guardian’s paranormal romance series. Join us as we chat with Dianne about her work, then take a sneak peek at Night Unbound, the latest in her popular series.

Many more wonderful authors including A.L. Jackson, Quinn Loftis, Mary Manners and more.

Don't miss these entertaining columns -> Our New Column Debut
Bestseller’s Secret
FROM DYSLEXIC TO BESTSELLER...

Chic Trends in Romance
SEXY GOES BUMP IN THE NIGHT

The Hot Hunks of History
DARK DUKES OF HISTORY

The Heat Diva
HOT SUMMER WRAP UP

Ali B. and the Forty Spaceships
TO READ, PERCHANCE TO DREAM...

The Scrying Eye
GHOSTS OF THE PAST... DEMONS OF THE PRESENT

Forever Young
THE RETRO SCREAM: HORROR NOVELS THAT NEVER GET OLD

BTS Goes Hollywood
ALEX BLEDSOE

Follow Me Tour: Bluster and Chop

Juvenile African fish eagle

Day 4 (29 August) started with a wind that promised two things: it was going to be cold on the water, and the animals were going to hide away from us. And it was windy! We didn't see many animals, although the birds were out in full force.

Who says an African fish eagle doesn't hover? The wind was so strong that this bird had to hover for several seconds before it could manoeuvre itself to land on the branch...where it started off in the first place!

There were not many animals out, but here are some more elephant photographs. The hovering eagle is also on display. Enjoy!

PS: All my Botswana photographs (the ones that were worth keeping) will find themselves onto a board on Pinterest. Some are pinned already if you would like to take a peek.

Adult and baby elephants drinking water

The struggle of the fish eagle!

Follow Me Tour: Spectacular sunset

Sunset #1

Day 3 - 28 August - sunset

Like most people I love a beautiful sunset. The photographs you see here are not the result of any editing afterwards - they were just resized, otherwise it would take forever to upload. To be honest I cannot do much editing afterwards anyway, since I neither own a copy of Photoshop (or Lightroom) nor do I have any idea how to use these software programs.
So you might rightly ask how it is possible to take photographs that look black and white, and yet they are not. The easy answer is: camera settings.
Brendon, our intrepid photographic guide instructed us to set the ISO on the camera low and to under expose the image between 1 and 2 F-stops. And I listened :)
So here are two of those images of a spectacular sunset on the Chobe river, taken about two minutes apart as we drifted with the flow of the river.

Sunset #2

Follow Me Tour: And it gets better...

Blue heron

Day 3 - 28 August - the late afternoon

We went out the boat again. We expected the leopard to still be where we had seen her earlier in the day. She had a kill hidden under a tree that we could see and that told us that she could be around for a few more hours.

On the way to the site, we got distracted by other birds and animals, and were a little late to arrive. There were other boats already and they had spotted the leopard. While we didn't catch her drinking, we stuck around and got some more photographs of this gorgeous cat.

I also caught an African fish eagle in flight. Please forgive the lack of sharpness in the photographs as this was the first time that I have tracked a bird in flight and I didn't think it too bad for a first effort.

We also got some great shots, and really close up, of elephants on one of the islands in the river. The baby elephants were too cute as they swung their trunks around still trying to figure out what it was supposed to be used for. We saw one mimicking its mother as she picked the grass, shook off the dirt from the roots and then ate it. The baby got it right until the putting-in-my-mouth part, that didn't appear to be working so well :)

We hit some waves from the side of the boat and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable there for a few minutes, but it passed. If I had to choose between the boat trips and the trips on the vehicle over land, the boat would win hands down.

I didn't have to hold the Nikon camera with its heavy 200-400mm, f4 lens in my hand to shoot with, as the boat is fitted with a rotating tripod. On the vehicle that is not the case.

The roads are very uneven and it is not comfortable to hold on to keep your balance, hang on to a rental camera of high value and also keep an eye out for a good sighting to photograph.

Here are some more photographs to enjoy :)

Elephants

Leopard

Giant kingfisher

African fish eagle in flight

Follow Me Tour: I went on a boat!

The selfie is Francois, I am in the dark glasses :)

Day 3 (28 August) of our trip and I went on a boat today. For me that was a really big deal, since I suffer from motion sickness and it is the worst on water. So to say that I was apprehensive beforehand, would be the understatement of the year.

But I swallowed my pride/fear and climbed on board. And what an amazing experience!

Our cameras were attached to special rotatable tripods that moved with the chairs, and that was pretty cool. The best was the view we had of the animals and birds though.

Buffalo

We were so close to ground level on the river, that if felt like we were looking the crocodiles straight in the eye. Not quite literally, but very close.

Crocodile

The water birds were plentiful today, and so were the antelope and buffalo. I took almost 500 photographs today, because...we saw a leopard. It was a female that came right to the water's edge to drink. I kept pushing the button to get as many photographs as I could. Fortunately, the camera kept up with my enthusiastic finger :)

Animals we saw: leopard, buffalo, lechwe, puku, crocodiles, hippopotamus, water monitors, impala, kudu and waterbuck.

African fish eagle

Birds that spotted us: African fish eagles, marabou stork, Egyption geese, African spoonbill, yellow-billed stork, blue heron, goliath heron, large white egret, little egret, black egret, oxpeckers, squaco heron, giant kingfishers, pied kingfisher, spruce winged geese, glossy ibis, sacred ibis and jackana.

Leopard